Discover (and save!) A rain garden filled with wildflowers and native plants adds more than beauty to your home. A rain garden is basically a plant pond, that is, a garden bed that you plant with special deep-rooted species. You direct the rainwater from the downspouts to the garden via a swale (a stone channel) or plastic piping. As a bonus, many plants suited to a rain garden are natives, which attract local pollinators. They can be easily combined with schemes to harvest rainwater. Why build a rain garden? It is important to get out in the rain, and watch how runoff moves on the site. Learn more about rain gardens—plus, find two rain garden plants lists and designs featuring plants for both sun and shade. With a rain garden, use—don’t lose—the torrent of rain water that falls on your paved areas and roof. A rain garden much less than four inches deep will need an excessive amount of surface area to provide enough water storage to infiltrate the larger storms. Entire towns, such as Maplewood, Minnesota, have turned to rain gardens to handle neighborhood storm-water management, plunking little planted basins down between curbs and property lines. Learning to Maintain Your Rain Garden. Raingarden diagram. It is designed to temporarily hold and soak in rain water runoff that flows from roofs, driveways, patios or lawns.

As to how a rain garden actually works, the diagram below pulled from SF Better Streets helps lay out how gardens like these work: In the case of the new rain gardens…

Like any living thing, from a houseplant to your existing landscaping, rain gardens take some maintenance, and it might be a little different than what you are used to, but don’t worry, we are here to guide you. 12 | P a g e CREATING YOUR RAIN GARDEN ADD SOME COMPOST Depending on your soil, you may not need to add organic matter, but it can loosen the soil, enhancing its permeability and making it easier for new plants to develop strong roots.

No matter what the depth of the rain garden, the goal is to keep the garden level.

Learn more about rain gardens—plus, find two rain garden plants lists and designs featuring plants for both sun and shade. It’s an environmentally-friendly way to catch stormwater that runs off roofs, driveways and other surfaces. Posted January 15, 2020 05:44:33 A rain garden works by running water through several layers of different sediment. See more ideas about Rain garden, Stormwater, Diagram. Rain Gardens A rain garden is a landscaped feature that replaces an area of your lawn in order to collect the stormwater (rain and melted snow) that runs off your grass, roof and driveway. Rain gardens have gained wide residential use in cities as diverse as Kansas City, Minneapolis, and Portland, Oregon (the latter two offer utility-bill discounts for rain-garden installation).